Tom Leeser: Indiscriminate Visions
Artist(s):
Collaborators:
Title:
- Indiscriminate Visions
Exhibition:
Creation Year:
- 1994
Medium:
- Interactive Installation
Category:
Artist Statement:
“Indiscriminate” is used to describe something that is chaotic and random in nature. “Vision” is defined as the physical act of seeing. It also refers to a dream, trance, thought, or mystical appearance, or an idea, an object or the imagination. Indiscriminate Visions is a virtual environment that presents personal visions in a format designed to promote cross-cultural dream sharing.
Using video animation and editing, common dream elements are extracted from different dreamers: people with diverse cultural, economic, and religious backgrounds. The act of dreaming becomes transformed from a personal and private ritual to a shared experience, framed as a part of a greater collective subconscious.
The interactive video piece is installed as a virtual space that insulates the viewer from all exterior distractions. The room is similar in design to a photo booth or a church confessional. Inside, there are two video monitors: one nine-inch black and white monitor and one 12-inch color monitor, mounted side by side. The black and white monitor displays dreamers recounting their visions, while the color monitor plays back the video collages.
Unlike typical interactive programs that include viewer choices and branching capability, this system is random. The video has been transferred to a video disc controlled by a computer that randomizes the playback of the video each time a new viewer activates a sensing switch by entering the space. By exposing viewers to random collections of images and text, Indiscriminate Visions reintroduces people to their dreams and gives them a connection between an external media- and information-based material world and the internal visionary subconscious.
